


Stages

by aries_taurus



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Episode Tag, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 08:14:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2500838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aries_taurus/pseuds/aries_taurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Grieving is a personal process that has no time limit, nor one “right” way to do it." Elizabeth Kubler Ross</i>
</p>
<p>Danny, and by extension, Steve, greive. Another tag to 5.04</p>
<p>Rated for language</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stages

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going through a really tough time. And yesterday, a terrorist struck at the heart of my country. The second in 3 days. I am NOT afraid. I'm sad. I'm angry. It's a sort of grief.
> 
> So, I wrote this tag to 5.04, intending to take Danny through the 5 stages of grief. It's not quite what happened.
> 
> POV switches from Steve to Danny. 
> 
> Unbeta'd  
> Read and comment?
> 
> Oh, and spoilers for the 5.05 previews...

* * *

 

 

1- Denial

He doesn’t know how long they stand there, with Reyes’ body leaking blood onto the dirty floor, the slow, even spats the only sound in the quiet save Danny’s harsh breaths.

He makes himself move, clamping his hand onto Danny’s shoulder just as his breath hitches.

“Hey, C’mon,” he says, his voice pitched low, trying to grab Danny into a bear hug before he falls apart.

“No, I gotta see-“ he says, reaching for the rusty drum. “It can’t… Can’t be him… Can’t… I need to see.”

“You don’t. Danny, please, don’t.”

Danny shakes his head, tears bathing his face, slicing clean paths on his sweat and grime stained cheeks.

“I gotta know. I gotta see,” Danny pleads, shaking and crying. “It can’t be him…”

Steve just grabs him and crushes him to his chest, the gun still in Danny’s hand clattering to the floor. “Shh, Shh, Danny. I’ll do it. I’ll know if it’s him. Maybe it’s not but if it is… You don’t need to see. Okay? You don’t need to see.”

“I…” Danny tries to speak through his tears but he can’t.

“Danny. I’ll do it. I’ll see if it’s him and if it is, I’ll make sure we take him home. Okay?”

He sniffs loudly, swallows and nods as he wipes his eyes. “Okay.”

“Go. Wait for me upstairs, all right?”

Danny nods and disappears up the stairs, casting a long hard look at the room before he goes, steps slow and dagging, shoulders sagged, heavy with the weight of loss.

Once Steve’s sure he’s not coming back down, he walks over to the rusted drum. He lets his chin drop to his chest and closes his eyes for a few beats, bracing for what’s to come.

The lid’s not perfectly fitted. It only takes a bit of force for it to pop loose and open. The stench’s immediate and he has to swallow hard. He blinks hard and inhales, setting the lid up against the side of the drum.

He looks inside.

“Fuck.”

He can’t hold back the curse as he staggers a few steps back, putting his forearm against his mouth as he turns away from the sight, gagging, desperately trying not to throw up.

It’s Matt.

The body’s mangled and broken, partly decomposed but not unrecognisable, not yet. He’s been dead a few days, maybe a week, if he was kept down here where it’s cool. He can’t help the clinical analysis spinning in his head.

And it is Matt, Danny’s little brother and that’s what hits him the hardest; not the smell, not the sight, not what was done to Matt but what this will do, is already doing, to Danny.

He can’t help but imagine if it were Mary-Anne, there in that drum, tortured, broken and dead, and his heart wants to implode. He breathes heavily and chokes, throat thick with emotions and revulsion. Staggering off to the nearest pillar, he leans forward and gulps, fighting back nausea. He’s not one to get sick easily, pretty much has a cast iron stomach and a bad case of nerves makes him pace, not puke, but this is different. Because he know what this feels like, what it will be like for Danny and his family, knows how much this will hurt, knows it too well because he’s lived it, and it could just as easily been _Mary_ in there, a diamond smuggler instead of a drug dealer responsible for her death.

But it’s not Mary, it’s Matthew Williams, Danny’s baby brother. The only thing he can do now is get them both home, so Matt can be buried and Danny and his family can grieve and heal.

And now, he has to tell Danny.

He doesn’t have to. He makes it up the stairs and finds Danny quietly sobbing, sitting in a chair in between two cooling, bleeding bodies.

He squeezes his shoulder and squats next to his partner, his own throat tight, eyes wet. He can’t tune out the noises coming from outside, knows they have to move. Fast.

“Hey. We gotta go.”

“I can’t leave him here,” Danny whispers. “That… That’s my little brother down there!”

“We’re not. We’re gonna take him home. We got 13 million dollars belonging to a dead drug lord. We won’t have any trouble getting a plane to take him home, no questions asked.”

He swallows hard and braces for what he has to ask, hates that he has to be practical right now, instead of caring for Danny. They’re not safe here. He’s got contacts here, his last stint in Colombia not that recent but not so old that he’s lost touch, but he needs to set things in motion ASAP. So he sucks in a breath and asks.

“Now… Danny, if… If we take him straight home to New Jersey, there’s gonna be questions. Unless… You got contacts home to smooth the way? Or… We,” he pauses, swallows thickly. “We can take him home with us, to O’ahu, to Max… He can… Make the formal ID, and… get him ready to go home, to your folks…

“Okay.”

“Okay…”

“I don’t wanna have anybody touch him but O’hana, Okay, please? He’s… He’s… Oh god, my little brother’s dead. Bastard tortured him and he killed him. He hurt my little brother… Christ… Matty’s dead!” Danny cries, overwhelmed with grief.

“Okay. Okay buddy. I’ll make it happen.”

He pulls out his phone and does just that.

* * *

 

2-3 anger & bargaining

He doesn’t know how he got back to the… whatever the hell they are; crash pad, safe house, hideout, dump, whatever. He doesn’t remember, doesn’t care. He doesn’t remember drinking himself into oblivion, doesn’t remember crying and screaming until he had no voice left…

He does remember why all of those things happened. The fact they’re not safe, stuck in the middle of a drug country after killing a major cartel player is a muted concern buzzing in the back of his mind but it doesn’t really register over the grief.

Matty’s dead.

Grief sits like a fifty pound weight in the middle of his chest, the only thing that registers despite the ghost of memories of everything that’s happened since they left that sordid dump of a bar where his little brother was murdered.

It’s morning, early and gray, dawn just coming and he’s alone in the dingy hole in the fucking middle of fucking Colombia and today, he has to go home and tell his mother he failed; that he couldn’t protect Matty from himself, that her son, his brother, is dead, tortured and executed and stuffed into an old oil drum like some piece of trash.

He should have fucking shot him. That time, four years ago. He should have put a damned bullet in his leg or his shoulder because he’d be in jail but the fucker would still be alive to bear Danny’s wrath, his unbelievable anger at the stupidity of all of this. All he can think is God, please let me turn back time and pull the trigger because it’s a better ending than this.

He wants to shout, rant at his idiot brother, ask him how the hell he thought it would end.

“Did you think you’d end up anything other than dead, you little fuck?” he screams at the empty room, spittle flying from his lips and tears flooding down his face.

“How the hell did you this it was gonna end, huh? You figured you were smart enough to fool a man like Reyes? You fucking moron! You’re dead now! Dead! And it’s my fucking fault because I didn’t have the balls to shoot you when I had the chance! I hate you. I hate you for doing this to me, to mom and dad and Deb and Molly!

“And now, now I gotta live with shooting Reyes in the face for you, to protect Grace and, and , and… FUCK! I HATE YOU, MATTHEW PAUL WILLIAMS!” he screams, smashing his fist into the closest wall. “I HATE YOU YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

He shoves his arm over the dresser, sending the ancient TV and other knickknacks flying, yelling out his rage.

He runs out of steam before he runs out of tears and he slides against the wall, crying like he hasn’t shed all the tears he ever had just twelve hours ago.

“You’re dead and it’s all my fault,” he whispers. “You’re dead because I wasn’t strong enough to stop you.”

* * *

 

4-depression

He doesn’t know how long he cries, just knows that somehow, Steve’s sitting next to him, an arm around his shoulders. He hears bits of conversations in Spanish, didn’t know Steve even spoke Spanish in addition to Korean, Mandarin and Japanese.

Somehow, he doesn’t want to say something. Doesn’t want to talk. The whole world just felt too heavy. The tears just keep coming and coming and he can’t bear to think he’ll never hear Matty’s voice again, that he has to tell his mother and father their baby’s dead.

Reality cuts out again and all he’ll remember later are a few broken images of jungles, trucks, planes and maybe even a boat. It connects again and he’s standing in the middle of Max’s office.

“Detective Williams?”

He looks up and the sympathy in Max’s eyes tears what remains of his heart turns to ash, even before Max says the words.

“I’m sorry. The identification is positive. The dental records and DNA are a match to your brother, Matthew Williams.”

He nods and inhales deeply. Not a single tear forms. His sorrow is too deep for more tears.

 

* * *

 

5-Acceptance.

He boards the plane taking him back to Hawaii, his heart as heavy as if it was his own brother’s funeral, not Danny’s.

It’s like watching Danny’s grief triggered his own, opened the gates for it to all come flooding back. He feels the last five years’ worth of losses and betrayal like chains dragging him down. The moment the plane touches down, he heads for home, pulls on his suit and heads to Punch Bowl.

He’s hurt, inside, raw and bleeding. Too much trauma, too much fear, too much… everything. He’s glad Danny’s still home, because he can feel himself falling apart, because Danny can’t hold him up this time. He needs to get himself stronger. To do that, he needs to face his own pain. He needs to stop running from it. Because there’s one thing he’s learned from Danny, from watching him going through all this, one thing that he hadn’t figured, one thing he’s seeing from the other side from, maybe not the first time, but it’s the first time it’s sinking in; grieving is not showing weakness. He always knew it, but he didn’t understand.

Now, he does. So he kneels by his father’s grave, greets him, and lets the tears fall.

 

Fin

%MCEPASTEBIN%

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
